Mr. Graham Doyle:

The Deputy have mentioned mica. We provided an amount of money that we expect and hope for. We made that available to be drawn down and then circumstances changed. In that situation, there was significant demand for revisions to the relevant scheme. In that case, there is a situation where claims are not made pending revisions to that scheme. It is not particularly foreseeable at the time the Department is trying to put the Estimate together. I appreciate that this is the case in quite a number of areas in the Department, exactly as the Deputy said, but given the scale, breadth and newness of a lot of what we are trying to do, and especially in the housing space, capital spend can notoriously swing, as the Deputy will know. We are a heavy capital spending Department as well. Some of this is part and parcel and some of it may be a bit beyond that in terms of the times we have been in and the circumstances we found ourselves in.

I can tell the committee that our best efforts go into this, and there is a lot of toing and froing between ourselves and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on all of these matters. They certainly do not like giving or applying money they do not believe will be spent. I appreciate that this happens and we have just got to keep trying to work through the process and hopefully see some of those swings narrow.